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Things  I need to remember for next year’s winter.  Cover the Esperanzas and the Plumbago.  They both got a bit too much freeze damage.  Luckily they are both coming back.  The crowns are alive but the branches got too much freezing temperature. I also had a small problem with the iris’ that Leena, my neighbor, gave me.  The iris’ look like they are growing.  But for some reason the deer keep trying to eat and pull up one poor iris.  I don’t know why. I keep replanting it, and they keep pulling it up.  I’m going to move it to the back and put it in a pot and see how it does. But overall the irises look good, like they are alive and growing.

The good new is it looks like we will be getting a fence.  It will be mainly black 6 foot tall iron, but it will have stone work columns sprinkled in there.  Since its about 350-375 feet of fence (maybe more) it will give me a large yard.  I just hope it can keep the deer out.  That’s the clincher.  But we have the HOA’s approval, we’ve found someone to build the fence, so we should be getting it built soon.  It doesn’t really cover much of the front of the house, and it doesn’t cover any of the front of the yard, but it does cover the side and the back area up to the green house.  We will have a couple of gates which will be nice.  I just hope all goes well and it gets built without any hang ups.  We can hope.

The rosemary did fine.  They look healthy, have some flowers on them and are doing great.  The only one not doing great was in pretty bad shape before winter came.  So I’m not worried about that one.

 This is lantana.  I thought it was able to take the frost and I think it did an okay job.  It also appears to be coming back from some canes and from the center.  But these are plants the deer will eat, Improved Yellow Lantana, so whatever cames back is great news.

Jan 29, 2013

Same plant Feb. 8, 2013

These were summer squash seeds I put in a pot in the greenhouse.  The dates of the pictures are accurate.  Good thing I only planted 4 seeds.  I didn’t expect but 1 or 2 to come up.  Now we’ll see how they make it thru the spring and summer.

This is a before and after of oregano.  This is a pot I had from last year.  It wasn’t doing much.

Jan 29, 2013

 But it is definintely picking up this year.

Same pot Feb 8, 2013

Jan 29, 2013

Same pot Feb 8, 2013

Glad to have nice weather back.  Last week was cold, both day and night.  One day we never got above 36 degrees.  Today its almost 1:30pm and we are already at 64 degrees.  Much nicer weather.

I think we may have lost a few plants from last week’s cold, but we will have to wait and see on that.  Some of the plants in front look just brown, like they may have frozen.  But I don’t know if they have died.  Some of the bulbs I planted are trying to grow.  They would do better if the deer would leave them alone.  But the deer outside are not looking good and are looking for whatever they can eat.  Hopefully they will leave my bulbs alone long enough for the bulbs to grow.  We can hope, and wait and see.

The plants in the green house are doing fine.  I did move some of the house plants that were outside into the green house.  Most of those house plants look like they will survive, though they do show some signs of damage.  One in particular, a spider plant, does not look good.  I’m not sure if it will survive.

But I repotted one lemon tree and it is doing much better.  The repotted lemon tree was the older of the two trees.  The younger tree is putting out blossoms.  Since it is in a green house, and I haven’t seen any bees in there to pollinate, I will have to take a paint brush and go pollinate my lemon tree.  We’ll see how that works.  I hope it works well.

I received my 3 x 3 foot planter.  I haven’t put it together yet.  Bill and I have been discussing what to do for a fence in the back yard.  If the weather stays this nice, I may want to put up the planter sometime soon.  But right now we are on a wait and see.  And of course if the weather stays this nice, I will need to start planting seeds soon.

But we are starting to get some more work done on the front yard.  Today Aby’s workers are working.  They are grading the front area, near the street and will lay down rock.  This should help with weeds and drainage, at least we hope it will.

UPDATE:  I went into the green house with a paint brush to pollinate the lemon tree.  There were bees on the flowers.  I guess with this nice weather the bees made it into the green house and found the lemon trees.  I just hope the bees know how to get out of the green house before the top louvers close tonight.

They didn’t say how much rain, but we are getting some light rain again.  We’re not even up to a quarter of an inch, but at least its a slow light soaking rain.  The ground will be happy even if we don’t get a lot of water into the tanks.

One interesting lesson – we had a green breathable plant blanket covering a set of plants.  The plants were under  a PVC frame, then the plant blanket on top of the PVC frame.  Well, it may be breathable, but not a lot of water got to the plants.  The center of the plant blanket, where water collected in a pool, was letting a small drip of water thru.  We had a pool of water on top of the blanket.  We just went outside to take the blanket off and realized that we had quite a pool of water on top of the blanket. Interesting thing to remember.  They may be good blankets to keep frost off of the plants, but they don’t necessarily let a lot of moisture thru them.

Yesterday we had to go to Home Depot.  I picked up a new pot for the lemon tree and two blackberry plants.  They are small blackberry plants, the inexpensive $8, in paper cup kind of plant.  They seem to be essentially bare roots stuck in dirt – definitely dormant plants.  I have them soaking in water, but I don’t think they will get potted today.  I did repot the lemon tree, and in the process used most of the potting mix I had.  So hopefully tomorrow or Thursday I can go pick up more potting soil and pot the blackberries.

Yesterday I also ordered a raised bed system.  I ordered it from Gardeners Supply.  I ordered:
3 X 3 foot raised bed
liner for the bed
garden hoops – not sure if I will need them but I figured I could use them to keep critters out
grow bags – I’ve never used them but they might be useful to grow things in.

I also ordered some seeds from Park Seeds.  Actually I ordered a whole mess of seeds from Park Seed. One problem I’m finding here is that Home Depot and Lowes seem to sell on a national date system.  What do I mean by that? Well, here we have a long growing season.  Our average first frost is November 21-30, and our last frost date is March 11-20.  So we can grow frost free at least 8 months out of the year.  But right now, early January, both stores have little to nothing available.  So if you want to start plants in a greenhouse, and I have a greenhouse I can use, you can’t get much out there.  They don’t even have much in the way of pots to purchase.  So I ordered stuff online.  I’ll try to order roses sometime soon.  Those will have to go into pots, otherwise they are deer candy.

The weather seems to have warmed up today.  Its 1pm and we are up to 54 degrees.  Its pleasant outside.  I went out and checked the greenhouse, haven’t done that in a few days, more like over a week.  Surprisingly, everything seems to be doing well.  I did go into the greenhouse last week to move some house plants in there, but that had been all.  So today I went in to check everybody.  Actually all those poor seeds I had put in the pots seems to be more then happy.  They are coming up.  IN DROVES!!  I think I planted too many seeds.  But they are coming up. It is I admit nice and warm, not to hot and with some pleasant sun in there.  I think the house plants will enjoy it for a while.  

Guess what!! I think we actually got a light dusting of snow last night.  It didn’t last, but you can see this fine, and not quite so fine line of white in the angles of rooflines.  So I think we actually got a little bit of snow sometime last night.  I’m not sure if we actually got rain too, but it is wet outside. Its still pretty cold out there, so until it warms up its probably not the best place to go driving.

Weather update – They are saying we may be in for an actual winter weather event.  What is that you ask?  Possible snow/sleet tonight.  Right now I’m not so sure it will happen up here where we are, but you never know.  I’m sure it would be unusual.  On the other had, if it actually happens, I wouldn’t want to have to drive up or down our driveway.  Our driveway is just too steep and I could see it getting treacherous. This new weather is due to hit tonight and last thru tomorrow, Friday, around noon.  We’ll see.

Wicked weather.  We’ve been cold, cool, and still no real rain.  The weather has been up and down, some cold and cool days – right now at 8:30 am its all of 35, after a low of 32.  We’ve even had some below freezing nights.  But not any real rain.  I say not any real rain because the other day we had heavy fog – the houses across the street were mere shadows.  That much moisture registered on the rain gauge, but no rain fell from the sky.  So the water catchment tanks didn’t get any new water.  So I can’t say it really rained.

And with some of these cold days, the humidity has varied widely.  One day it was cold and blustery, very windy, and the humidity level was down to 11% – that is dry.  Right now humidity is 78%.

But the holidays were nice.  We saw some family on Christmas Day.  Then the day after Christmas we went to see some other family here in Austin.  That day it was so cold I wore one of my down jackets.  That’s how cold it was around Christmas.  By New Years Eve we were just foggy.  Today its clear enough to see across the hills.  Not much wind, but its expected to be cold/cool for the next few days. Next week it should warm up enough for the nights to be out of the low 30’s and into the 40’s.  That will be good for the plants.

That might also be good for the deer.  The poor deer have not been looking too good out there.  Actually some of them look a bit scrawny.  And since its so cold, they are eating whatever green shrubbery they can find.  Between the deer and the cold I’m sure we’ll be replacing plants come spring.

The lantana is not taking this cold well.  It actually looks in pretty bad shape.  The plumbago is well eaten by the deer now, but what is left of it also looks pretty scrawny.  And the esperanza has been munched on and looks almost black from the cold.  The bulbs I put in are putting out their tops and those tops are being nibbled on by the deer.  I know most of the deer will survive, but I’m not sure which of my plants will.  Sone of the irises have been pulled out by the deer.  The deer don’t seem to care for eating the irises but they seem to try them anyway.

I’m starting to think about plants for the spring and what and how I want to plant things.  I’m thinking I may just figure out where and how to do some raised beds.  I’m hoping to find some sort of recycled material raised beds on Amazon.com.  I’m not sure what I will find, but its either that or large pots.  I did pick up some large pots but right now the photinia are living in them.  When we got back from the Nov. trip and I was watering plants I realized the photinia were not absorbing water well.  So I purchased three large whiskey barrel type plastic pots and put the photinia in them.  This way I could water and let the photinia sit in the water a bit to absorb some.  The good news is I’m pretty sure the plants absorbed the water well before we hit this cold weather.  Though I’m not too worried about them as they are sitting right next to the house.  The house type plants I had in the front of the house are not sitting under the sheltered back patio.  Hopefully they will survive the cold. I’m sure I put them back there a bit late, but we’ll see what happens and if they survive.

Yes its been a few weeks, and I’ve been gone out of town, out of the country.  And much has changed in that time.

Yesterday the weather was in the low 80’s, today we probably won’t hit 60.  It’s 3:30 in the afternoon and only 57 degrees outside. The tree leaves are changing, at least for those trees that can change.  The nights have cooled down too – last night got down to 47. So we have had a definite weather change.

Now for the good news.  We had a neighbor’s son water the outside plants while we were away.  We lost nothing.  Everything has survived.  Not only has everything survived, the outdoor tomato plant has two tomatoes, kind of large tomatoes ripening on it.  It does need some support but that’s okay.  I had watered my few indoor plants well when we left.  They all survived well too.  Admittedly my dish garden needed water, there were just a couple of dropping plants in it, but not many and nothing was even close to dying.  So all in all, I think it went well.

My mint is struggling though.  Not sure why.  I also have a problem with whitefly.  That I have to figure out how to handle.  It’s evident in the greenhouse.  I think its the reason the cucumbers never did well.  But the jalapeno plant in the green house does have one small pod.  Also I’ve noticed that the tomato plants in the green house are not doing as well as the one outside.  I’m not sure why.  I’ll have to do some more checking on that one.

Where I haven’t seen any deer, Bill says he’s seen just a few.  I think that’s a bit unusual, usually we have the congregating in the back yard in the evening, but not now.  Don’t have any answer why the change, maybe its just a season change.

I’ll write more later.  I got back and promptly got sick.  There was a cold or something that went around while we were gone.  Bill was feeling poorly and had to buy sudafed while we were gone.  He had to take it to survive the flight home.  So its not really surprising that I’ve come down sick.  It seems to be just a cold, so its rest and lots of soup.

Weird weather.  It has definitely cooled down.  The past couple of weeks have been nice weather, with occasional rain thrown in for good measure.  Its been foggy, can’t-see-across-the-street mornings followed by cloudy overcast days.  And then we get a good old foggy but warm morning followed by warm muggy overcast day.  Go figure.  But the good news is the plants are loving it.

We are still having bachelor parties some days in the back yard.  Actually some days it just looks like parties in the back yard.  We have deer just coming in, some close to the house as if they don’t care we are inside.  And they are once again eating plants they are not supposed to like – the wax myrtle and the cypress.  But it feels nice outside, and much better then those triple digit days.  So all in all its doing nice outside.

They’ve pretty much finished the garage.  Bill and Pat have started moving stuff into it.  Bill even put up the blinds on the windows and installed the door locks on the new garage.  So its safe secure and fast filling up.  Maybe we’ll actually have a place to put our cars.  One can hope.